Category Archives: Travel

And one more reason O’hare sucked yesterday…

Posted on by
Reply

Connectivity! Verizon wireless signs are all over the place in Chicago. Saw a few of them, along with a Verison Wireless booth, at the airport as well. But, although I was supposedly in an EVDO area, my connection speeds were terrible. Much, much slower than an old 56k modem. No free WiFi , EVDO was running slow as molasses, and it was impossible to find a power outlet since there were so many people camped out on the floor sleeping or plugged in. Did I mention how long it took to get my bag that I had to check so I could take toothpaste with me?

At least the WiFi is free at the Pittsburgh Airport. I’ve seen download speeds of 1.7Mb with EVDO here and Chicago is a much bigger city and O’hare is a much bigger airport. No excuse. And when I went to pick up my bag I spent less than 5 minutes waiting for it.

It’s good to be home. Next time I have to travel to Chicago I will rent a burrow to get home. You can have my seat on the plane.

Oh, and while I’m venting – I found the world’s slowest website yesterday. Without a doubt USAir.com is the slowest thing I have ever used, and of course, you need information quickly when you’re trying to track flight status on a day filled with delays. At first I thought it was me or my setup, but everyone was complaining about it.

O’hare Airport – Never Again

Posted on by
Reply

I made my first trip to Chicago this week. Nice town. Huge town. I had some bad and some good out there.

The Good:

  • The meeting I attended went really well
  • Switched from a regular laptop case to a backpack at an Apple store
  • Had the best New York Strip I ever had at a place called Magnums
  • Rented a Hyundai Sonata and was really impressed – nice car

The Bad:

  • Traffic. Wow, how do you people that live there stand it
  • O’hare Airport. I got there @ 1:30pm for a 4:55pm flight to Pittsburgh. Tried to get on an earlier flight via standby but it didn’t work out. My flight got delayed so many time it was ridiculous. Finally left O’hare after 8pm. That place is crazy. People were laying all over the place trying to sleep on the floors. It was packed.
  • The buildings were so tall downtown that it drove the Hertz Neverlost navigation system crazy. At one point it kept telling us to make right turns until it had drawn a perfect square on the screen. It was boxing us in! It had no idea which way was up when we were downtown.

I really wanted to check out Chicago but didn’t have enough time. I’d like to see it again some day but there is no way I’m going to deal with Ohare ever again.

6:24:48

Posted on by
1

That’s how long it took Valerie and her sister Marsha to walk the Cleveland Marathon today. Together they raised almost $4000 for the American Stroke Association and today they finally got to put all of the hard work and training to use. I couldn’t be more proud. The kids and I snuck up to Cleveland to be at the finish line when they crossed. They were definitely surprised.

Marathon pictures HERE.

While you’re checking out the Marathon pictures, check out the pictures I took while walking around Cleveland. Since I’m from Pittsburgh I’m not really allowed to like Cleveland (it’s in the official Steelers fan handbook). This was my first trip up there and I was blown away by how nice it is. We’ll definitely plan a longer trip and check out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, etc. Beautiful city.

Cleveland pictures HERE.

It’s good to be back home

Posted on by
Reply

It’s great to get away for a while, but it always feels good to get back home. Don’t get me wrong, I would definitely rather still be on vacation, but it feels good to be sitting here in my own house after traveling for 9 days.

We had a great time in Beaufort, SC visiting Marsha and Mickey. The girls had a blast. We fished for 3 of the days and only Mickey ever caught a fish. 6 people fishing for 3 days and only 2 fish caught. That’s pitiful.

I got to golf at a place called Legends on Parris Island where the Marines are. Listed as one of the top 10 military courses in the world. It was a nice course. Really hot day, but I finally broke 100. I shot a 97. That’s still not very good but it’s the best I’ve ever done. Only lost 2 balls.

Between the 4 of us we have way over 100 bug bites on our bodies. It’s tough not to scratch since everyone is so itchy. Some kind of gnats I guess.

As usual I took a bunch of pictures.

Click HERE for pictures from Savannah, Ga.
Click HERE for the first group of pictures from Beaufort, SC.
Click HERE for the second group of pictures from Beaufort, SC.

Catching up while the connection is up

Posted on by
1

I was hoping to post a lot of pictures about the trip we’re on but I really don’t have the bandwidth (literally) to post anything. I am rushing to send this before the wireless I am using from someone in the neighborhood goes away again. I tend to only get signal once in a while.

I’ll post the pictures when I get to a decent connection, but Savannah is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. I took some pictures that came out much better than expected during one of those horse drawn carriage rides.

What else? Oh yeah, Apple released Boot Camp so you can dual boot an Intel Mac with OS X and WindowsXP. Do we care? Maybe a little, but I’d probably never use it. I don’t like booting between multiple operating systems. Eventually it will get old and you’ll want to stay with one. The novelty will wear off. I’d rather have virtualization. Let OS X be the host OS and let me run other operating systems at a decent performance as guests. Lots of rumors out there that Apple will do just that, but I’m also reading that VMWare has an OS X version running in their lab. Count me in on that one.

Microsoft released a bunch of patches today. Have you switched to Firefox yet? You’re running out of excuses – you know I’m right.

That’ll have to do for tonight. We missed the first 30 minutes of American Idol while we were out fishing. Forgot all about it. Wanted to see Bucky sing Fat Bottom Girls and see if Pickler mutilated Bohemian Rhapsody. I know a ton of you love her but she doesn’t have the horsepower to go the distance. If she does make it it will only be because of all the people in the south that relate to her – it won’t be based on talent. I still think Chris is the strongest singer out there. I figure Kelly and Bucky should start packing over the next couple of weeks. Ace’s run, based on his looks, will end shortly after. Elliott can definitely sing, but I don’t think he can outlast Chris and Katharine; my pick for the final two. Taylor’s run is almost over as well, and Paris, although talented, is creeping me out lately.

Back from Myrtle Beach

Posted on by
Reply

The golf trip was fun and I’m glad to be home so I can sleep in my own bed. I golfed terribly; some of the highest scores ever. One thing is for sure – it’s not the clubs, it’s the guy swinging them. I was not prepared for the amount of abuse this would put on my body.

The rollcall of pain:
Forearms? Sore.
Back? Sore.
Calves? Sore.
Shins (yes, shins) Really sore.
Ankles? Sore.
Feet? Sore.

Notes from the trip:
Lowest score I shot all week: 110. I know – terrible. I thought the courses were tough. Beautiful, but tough.
Average temperature: mid 70′s.
Favorite slogan on a lighter: My other ride is your Mom. This one kept me laughing for a while.
Strangest moment: a lactating stripper tried to squirt me with breast milk. There is way more to this story but I’m not sharing it on the web site!
Favorite 9 holes: Tot Hill Farm. We stopped there on the way to Myrtle and the front 9 was really slick. Boulders and water everywhere. Pretty hard course but it looked like we were out in a desert somewhere. Very cool. Didn’t like the back 9 as much.
Favorite 18 holes: Tiger’s Eye. I think I liked every single hole on this one.

Worst…GPS…Ever

Posted on by
3

Traveling down in Raleigh, NC so I figured I would turn to the one device that has proven accurate any time I have ever traveled – the Neverlost GPS system from Hertz. Unfortunately Hertz was out of cars today so I had to rent from National. I reserved their answer to the Neverlost system and was surprised when they handed me a small Nextel device in a bag. To use it you suction-cup it to the windshield, press the green button twice, and a human comes on the phone asking you where you want to go. Huh? OK, I’ll play along. You tell the human where you want to go and they look up the route or address and push the route down to your phone.

From there the phone sort of works like the Neverlost by trying to talk you through the route and put arrows on the screen showing you which way to turn. If I had never used the Neverlost system I might not realize how bad this copy is. The screen’s backlight turns off so you can’t just look up and see what your next turn will be. It is slow. Numerous times it was telling me to make a turn when I was right on it. Not enough advance notice. It’s a guy’s voice. I like the female voice on the Neverlost.

But, once you can put all of that aside you want a device that will get you where you are going. This isn’t it. It had me turning all over the place. It told me to go east on a route and put it on the screen. Did I mention the screen is really small? So I made the turn it told me to and went east. It then decided to tell me I had gone off the route and it started recalculating. Terrible.

For the first time I really understand what they mean when they say “there’s Hertz, and there’s not exactly.”

That’s all for now. I need to go get directions off the Internet for my trip tomorrow because there is no way I am trusting that piece of junk anymore.

Vegas pictures are up

Posted on by
Reply

I took a walk down the Strip today and took a bunch of pictures at some of the sites. Mostly buildings. It was a long walk interrupted by numerous stops in Casinos along the way. I walked from Mandalay Bay to the Fashion Mall and then back. A long walk. It was light out on the way down and turned dark on my way back. The Strip comes alive at night.

Click HERE for the pictures.